Let me see. Basically, the course is divided into three different blocks.
In the first unit, the second unit, the third unit, and the fourth unit, we
have early American literature. And, wow, this is super slow. Let me see if
writing directly works better. In units five, six, seven, and eight, I'm
going to move the camera around so they can see me even at a distance.
We're going to have authors that... ...are different, and they belong to
the Age of Enlightenment and the Awakening, the Great Awakening. This unit
in particular is about the Great Awakening. The Great Awakening is a
religious experience that the second generation or the following
generations of Puritans tried to carry out in an attempt... ...to come back
to this original status. This is the core of Puritanism, and Puritanism is
going to fade away as the 17th century goes into the 18th century. So, if
we express this as a timeline, Puritanism is very strong, but falls
into...vanishes into oblivion as... ...the 17th century, leaves space for
the 18th century. In the 18th century, we have in the middle of the
century, this awakening. And the awakening is a period of religious
exaltation. So as we can see it, it's a moment where religion turns. I know
I've already said that Puritan religion can be seen as fundamentalist. If
Puritan religion can be seen as fundamentalist, the awakening is an
extremist fundamentalism. So it's even more extreme than traditional
Puritanism. So therefore, I think it makes sense to draw it as this bump in
importance. Jonathan Edwards was the instigator of reviving. There is a
revival of religion. But this takes place stretching the limits, the
traditional limits of Puritanism. The traditional limits of Puritanism, the
didactic purpose, the Puritan plain style, the indifference towards the
first person and trying to think of the collective. The idea of abandoning
free will, they go out the window. Maybe not all of them, but there is even
a temptation to embrace free will. That people are still in time to change
things in their life. And the awakening is both a call to attention and a
call to restore. So this idea, let me see if I can move this to the other
side. The tenets of the awakening are to restore faith. To recover this
agreement, this compact, this covenant with God. And to go back to the
principles that guide the Puritans, the manifest destiny. As I said, some
of them are going to disappear plain style. Doesn't seem to do the job. So
Jonathan Edwards tries something different. So we would say that the plain
style in the case of Jonathan Edwards, he decides to ignore it. The
didactic purpose is more or less ignored. Because Jonathan Edwards doesn't
want to teach his parishioners. He wants to instill fear. Fear of God. So
when you read the sermons of Jonathan Edwards, they provoked terror and
panic in the people that were exposed to them. We have to understand the
importance that religion had in that period of time. And it's not the same
type of importance that we give to religion nowadays. So we must understand
that this terror that was provoking people. It was Jonathan Edwards'
purpose. He wanted to provoke terror. And what did he use? He used an
outstanding rhetoric. Sermons that were based on metaphors and symbols. And
science used as a tool of God. And this is a really weird thing. Let me
show you how. how convinced Jonathan Edward was of the importance of
science. He was exposed, of course, to the science of his time, to Locke,
to Newton, to everything that was happening in Europe in terms of
mathematics, physics, and the breakthroughs that were constantly revolving
around the world, astronomy, etc. He died trying to prove to a group of
students the importance of vaccination by injecting himself with a diluted
virus that ultimately killed him. But in his attempt to say, this is how
useful science is and I'm going to use myself as a subject of experiment,
something very common for the doctors of the time to pick a child, an
orphan, someone destitute to use as a subject of experiment or to use
oneself. Jonathan Edward, died trying to prove the importance of the
vaccination of smallpox. So the same thing that he was trying to
demonstrate, the importance of medicine in the modern world was the thing
that ultimately killed him. If you read the sermons of Jonathan Edward from
this perspective, this perspective that is connected to the idea of
science, you will see that everything gains a new tone. He wants to
approach religion in a completely new way. He wants to fascinate, attract
the people that come to listen to his sermons. Those sermons are full of
power. All of his work is designed to be read, to be heard, not to be, I
mean, to be read out loud, to be heard by the readers. Or by the listeners
in this case. Not to be read in a book. Because the tone of the preacher
was as important as the message itself. I mean, let me, the idea of
recovering the covenants and restoring faith. are based on one principle
and one principle alone. The world is full of sin and it's full of guilt.
If the previous generation of Puritans centered the experience in one elite
part of society, that was them, the saints, that they called themselves,
for example, the pilgrims, and the others, in the case of Jonathan Edwards,
he had the understanding that everybody had failed God. But that only a few
of them were still in time to change their behavior, to come to the
conclusion that they had to be terrified of the existence of God because
God knew all of their sins and God was there to crush their life and their
soul and to hold them over hell and let them fall. And that's the type of
tone, that's the type of literature that we're going to see in the future.
In Jonathan Edwards' sermons. I quote from the famous work that we're going
to read today, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Before we read the
whole thing, I'm going to read a few lines as an introductory quote.
Therefore, let everyone that is out of Christ now awake And fly from the
wrath to come. The wrath of Almighty God is now undoubtedly hanging over a
great part of this congregation. Let everyone fly out of Sodom. Haste and
escape for your lives. Look not behind you. Escape to the mountain, lest
you be consumed. So, the tone is very dark. It's very excited. It's a dark
tone. It's quick-paced, it's negative, it's somber, and it seeks repentance
as well as it seeks fear. So what Jonathan Edwards wants his parishioners
to understand is that they're in the hands of God. And if they haven't died
through a tragedy, it's only because of God's will. Because God is the only
separation between them and the hell that they so much deserve. So it's
shifting the tone, not from the point of innocent lambs and all of those
ideas that we, the chosen people, the chosen land, all of that flies out
the window. It's the sinful people that deserve to be punished and they're
not punished only because the everlasting grace of God. So Jonathan
Edwards, he never belonged to a family of preachers, but he went, he took
it to the extreme. He was so extremist within the Puritans that he was
dispossessed of his parish and he had to resort to teaching at the end of
his life at an institution which would later be called, that he helped
found, an institution that would later be called Princeton nonetheless. So
not a bad fallback job for him, but we have... we have to understand that
he was so extremist that he was expelled from a church that is already very
fundamentalist and that was probably not, not in great numbers of followers
as to go expelling people. So he had to be considered as somebody dangerous
for the cause to be expelled and to... and to not be... and his behavior
not be tolerated. what we're going to contrast with this unit is the next
unit, the unit of Benjamin Franklin which has to do with the age of reason,
the age of enlightenment and we're going to see how all of these ideas this
is the downward path the downward fall from grace that a religion
experiments in America everything is not driven by religion anymore and
that is a significant difference regarding the previous generation in the
first generation religion is at the center of everything in the second
generation religion is just one factor more what is going to happen to all
of these Puritan principles well we already said even for current America
these religious ancestors are considered the forefathers of the nation so
the Puritan principles the Puritan basement, the pillars of Puritanism are
always going to be considered important for the idea of Americanism this
American dream, these American ideas some are going to be transformed into
different things for example the manifest destiny um is going to be
embraced as the right to dispossess their land anyone that was on the
American continent rather than the Americans that were there um the ideas
of choosing the chosen land and being the chosen people has to do with the
sense of supremacy that very quickly forms part of this American-ness that
is growing and it is separating the sentiment in America with a sentiment
in Great Britain that there are different types of people. There are the
people from The motherland that a couple of generations ago were the same
people, but they don't connect to those ideas anymore. They're going to
want to look for self-governance. They're going to want to look for not
being taxed by other ideas. We're in the beginning of the end of the
colonies, and we're at the beginning of the birth of the American nation.
All of these ideas of awakening, all of these ideas of enlightenment
connect very much with the idea of not wanting to be ruled by a king that
lives one ocean away and that no one has ever seen, and no one is very
interested in. The more people that come to America, the more colonizers
that come to America, the more diluted this idea of Puritanism becomes. So
diluting this idea also makes the importance of secular society more
important. Of other religions, of people that are not religious at all,
that have no religious background, more important for society. So in the
case of the next author, we're going to see something that is purely
American and that is absolutely separated from religion, the self-made man.
So this connection of the pinnacle, but at the beginning of the end of
Puritanism with the self-made man is going to be... is going to be our
introduction to an entire new era. It's an era where America stops being an
English colony and America turns into a country of itself. Okay? The other
two units that I mentioned before, seven and eight, are very important
because they're going to show us the connections to the basement of
America, the hidden face, what America wouldn't like for people to
acknowledge, to recognize as, as American, as apple pie, as American, as
Jonathan Edwards. Slavery. And how slavery has a very big impact on the
image that America creates in the world. The same way that we have
captivity narratives, the same way that we have The second big American
genre that is going to emerge is going to be slave narratives. Okay, so as
religion loses its predominance, other forms of arts, other forms of
expression rise and one of them is slave narratives and the other ones are
going to be turning from this account of the world to the account of
fiction to creating topics that are purely American. The emergence of
fiction. So fiction is going to rise also to fill the space, the void that
was left by Puritanism. So that's where we're going to start seeing the
first authors that don't talk about real events and talk about
fictionalized events and we're going to see how that happens. Okay, so in
the case of Jonathan Edwards, I have some paragraphs that I wanted to read
from this book that I'm so intense about and I acknowledge that I am very
intense about it. The book From Puritanism to Postmodernism that is not
part of your required syllabus but it's a really useful handbook devotes an
entire chapter to awakening and enlightenment. So I'm going to read not
about Benjamin Franklin but about both of them as the yin and the yang of
this age of awakening and enlightenment. On page 38 of chapter 2 it says
the entire era becomes evident in two remarkable American minds that
flourished in the 18th century Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin two
men who were not only seemed to realize and sum up the changes of American
thought and the variety within it. Born within three years of each other
the two are often seen as representing the idealist the other, the
materialist. One, the Puritan preacher, working in New England and on the
frontier. The other, the man of political activism, working to influence
the affairs and directions of the Western world. One, the speculative
thinker who was eventually to be thought of as an American Aquinas. The
other, the polymathic man for all seasons, the printer and politician,
scientist and inventor, whose flexible ranging intelligence could turn
readily in any direction his curiosity led him. In these terms, they do
indeed seem to represent opposite principles in the American mind. An older
metaphysical Puritan strain, looking back at the past, we can see Jonathan
Edwards as the only man that is holding back to the past, but trying to
push all of the religion forward. Looking back, looking back. Looking back
as a way of bringing things forward. And a new spirit of Yankee mercantile
practicality and ingenuity, looking forward to the future. So, Jonathan
Edwards in a certain manner represents the past, and Benjamin Franklin in a
certain manner represents the future of America in that period of time, in
that mid or in the first half of the 18th century. The contrast is
significant, but not complete. It is perhaps truer to say that new and old
were in different ways combined in both, and that both embodied fundamental
American continuities they passed on to the future. So, as I said, some
things die with Jonathan Edwards' awakening, failed attempt of awakening.
Some things survive and are passed on to American society. And some things
are transformed. For example, the idea of connecting the faith of America
to the ideals of God, making America a secular but a highly connected
country to religion, is something that stems from Puritanism. Okay, so let
me read... A bit more of Edwards. Or maybe not. I don't know if I have
anything marked. No, because, yeah, I remember why I didn't mark it.
Because this book goes into matters that go too much into detail about the
religious classes that led to the awakening. So in that case, when I was
selecting the paragraphs, I thought it best to leave that paragraph out for
the sake of brevity. Wow, so many people having problems coming back and
forth. I hope they can connect. Well, we have ten people online. Okay,
well, I hope that's working. Can you still hear me? I hope that everything
is fine at home. Well, one of the things that we have to talk about then is
to frame the great awakening. So as I said before, if this wants to pass
the slide, the great awakening is a wave of exaltation intended to awake
the dormant religious feelings. It is a revival to restore the 17th century
Puritanism, the purity. So more than ever, the importance of the name
Puritan takes a new ground. The awakening is an attempt to restore that
purity that they consider that has been completely lost. Wow, this is
moving. Hold on. Okay. Okay. So, the awakening is a wave of exaltation.
Thank you very much. an attempt to revive the purity. It begins in 1734 and
it extends to the early 1740s. After which it dwindles, not early, late.
Rather late. So it's a 14 to 15 year period that starts with a Calvinist
calling to recover the lost faith and a group of preachers turns more
fundamentalist than the rest of the preachers. You have to understand that
the only form of communication for many communities was sometimes the
information that was given by their preacher. Their preacher was their only
connection to the world. Communities were normally very closed. People were
worried about surviving and progressing and their time at church was
normally a time where they received news from their preacher and the
contents of the preacher were adapted to the problems of the community.
From that point of view, a group of preachers decided that it was important
to revive to rekindle another word for revive is rekindle faith and to
restore the covenant it emphasized the individual experience of conversion
or regeneration. So conversion is embraced. remember that William Bradford
or other Puritans did not believe in conversion they believed that they
were the chosen people they were chosen by God so the idea of chosen people
flies out the window the moment that they accept the idea of conversion and
regeneration for some ministers that were more traditional the great
awakening was a heresy against religious sentiments and many believed that
it was a way of losing control of the parishioners, of the community the
emotional side of religion is now the most important so religion connects
to emotion although the emotion is going to be in the case of Jonathan
Edwards for the negative if you've seen gospel churches in America you've
seen how the effects of the great awakening are still visible so that
emotional connection with church that crying or weeping or saying
hallelujah in the middle of service raising your hands being very vocal and
very visible about religion having an individual experience becomes very
important so we can say that this great awakening and other similar
movements well I mean Jonathan Edwards words of wisdom and similar works of
other preachers is the foundational pillar of everything that is to come in
terms of other churches that connect religion to emotion that is so bizarre
for Europeans when Europeans travel to America and see that type of
religious manifestation it seems as if it were a completely different
religion because the way that religion was interpreted by the people
changed and diverged very much in this moment in time, in this 18th
century. Edwards was one of the most important defenders of the Great
Awakening and he was also one of the most criticized because of that. As I
said before, it cost him his job. When we refer to Calvinists, just a
reminder, in case you didn't come when we talked about it in William
Bradford's class, that Calvinism is a sort of supra-religious sentiment
that includes the English Puritans. The English Puritans are reformers of
the Church of England that reached their peak during the 16th and 17th
century. Afterwards, they dwindled and disappeared as a religious
congregation. Other Calvinist congregations did manage to continue and did
manage to maintain a significant importance within American society or they
were so closed that they were isolated from American society. We've talked
about the Quakers, for example, in another class. So, the problem with this
strain of religion, in my opinion, could be that it probably turned too
mainstream. And by turning mainstream, it ended up embracing ideas from
secularism that were not exactly compatible with being a Puritan as
Puritanism was conceived two centuries ago. The more that Puritans
intermarried with people from other religions, the less important religion
became for those new families. So, religions lost its predominance because
the Puritans were very dominant in that religion. In that society, but they
were open to interacting with other people from society. And the waves of
immigrants also had an influence on that. Regarding the works of Jonathan
Edwards, how am I doing on time? I'm not bad. Okay. His reputation nowadays
is based on one sermon and one sermon alone, Sinners in the Hands of an
Angry God. And this sermon is considered to be the literary monument of the
Great Awakening. So the Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is the most
important piece of the Great Awakening. Edwards was not worried at all with
terrifying his parishioners. In fact, it was one of his goals. His goal was
for people to cry, to faint, to run out of church and to feel the terror
while they were listening to him deliver his preach. His rhetorical
strategies tried to give a sense of urgency, a sense of immediacy. There is
a sense of immediacy was designed to instill fear. And he wanted to avoid
metaphors that were stale, that were not serving their purpose. His
metaphors had to be very powerful and very visible. His sermons are based
on being very eloquent, being very rigorous, and he treated the creation of
a sermon as if it were a mathematical problem. So he designed them as if it
was a mathematical problem. So his approach to the sermon is very similar
to the approach that the tomes of science had at the same time. There was
an exposition, there was a development and a conclusion. And we're going to
see how there is a sort of structure that reminds us to an essay. There is
a text, there is a statement that is made to be either refuted or to be
demonstrated as if we were talking about a thesis. And the development was
there to reinforce the idea or to contradict it. And the conclusion was
there to wrap up the whole idea. So the importance of Jonathan Edwards'
work makes the Cambridge history of American literature call him a
histeric. He's considered a king's author because he's in the middle of
nowhere or he's in the middle of everywhere. He is sometimes called the
last great Puritan or the first romantic. And of course we'll talk about
romanticism later on in three more units. But don't understand romantic as
a sentimental novel. When we talk about romantic, we're talking about the
literary movement of romanticism that has... has to do with designing a
story that is called a romance, okay, not romanza, and has to do more with
extending the area of what is obvious to the experience of the person to
things that are not so obvious and have to do with the supernatural. So,
connecting this reality to the supernatural is something that he starts to
do in a way of visibilizing God in such a way that you can feel or you can
understand the hand of God over you or how he compares the sinners to
spiders and you imagine that idea of a sinner turning into a spider and
clinging above hell only held by a cobweb and it's God's will to let go of
the cobweb and for you to burn in hell. The idea of a burning hell that is
below every single sinner is an idea that connects us not to the experience
but to something that is outside of our experience and that's where
Romanticism lies, okay? In connecting the natural or the existing with the
supernatural or the imagined in the realms of the dreams and the
imagination. The analysis of the sermon itself it has those ideas that I
said before. It follows the tripartite structure of a Puritan sermon and
for example it starts with a statement their foot shall slide in due time
and this comes from Deuteronomy 32-35 you have the sermon on page, let's
see, 70, 80? 83. Deuteronomy 32-35 their foot shall slide in due time so
it's already talking about something negative that is going to happen to
someone and it's only a matter of time and the title itself already makes
us imagine that God has an emotion and the emotion is not happiness the
emotion is happiness is disappointment, utter disappointment that has
transformed into rage. And rage is transformed into anger. And an angry God
is a God that is going to instill terror in the people. The following part
of the sermon would be the text itself. That begins with the biblical
quotation that I just mentioned. And a brief explanation that explains the
meaning in its context. For example, and I'm going to read the whole thing.
But for example, it says, There is nothing that keeps wicked men at one
moment out of hell but the mere pleasure of God. That idea that it puts
everything in the hands of God and nothing in the hands of that sinner that
has run out of opportunities to save their lives. So the feeling that
people get is that they're going to be burnt in hell that same day in that
same moment. The doctrine. Are a series of ten considerations from which we
read the four first ones in the text. That work as a thesis statement
towards the application. The application is the second part from which
we're going to read. So as you can see, we're reading an excerpt of the
sermon. I've seen recordings of the sermon and when you see them, they're
delivered in a way that reminds you. To a fanatic reading to an audience
that is either terrified. Or that embraces this message completely. The
whole sermon lasts around 45 minutes reading it when it's read out loud.
And it's read in an angry tone, in a very visceral tone. As a way of being
addressed to the audience. So they get the message. The application that
comes on page 84. And that we read from it over the course of two pages,
three pages approximately. but we don't read the entire thing, is trying to
turn the abstract messages delivered during the ten considerations and turn
them into something specific. Okay, so the application is turning the
theoretical ideas into something specific. That's the purpose of the
application. The conclusion ends the sermon as a simple statement to wrap
up the whole speech. There are three extracts in the sermon that we read.
The first two parts are from the text and doctrinal section. The second is
the beginning of the application that we read. And finally, we read the
conclusion of the sermon. But as you will notice, it's very well selected,
so we're going to have the opportunity to grasp the intensity of the sermon
itself. Sinners in the hands of an angry God Deuteronomy 32.35 Their foot
shall slide in due time. In this verse, it is threatened the vengeance of
God on the wicked unbelieving Israelites who were God's visible people and
who live under the means of grace. But who, notwithstanding all God's
wonderful works towards them, remained, as in verse 28, void of counsel,
having no understanding of them. Under all the cultivations of heaven, they
brought forth bitter and poisonous fruits, as in the two verses preceding
the text. The expression, I have chosen for my text, their foot shall slide
in due times, seems to imply the following doings relating to the
punishment and destruction to which these wicked Israelites were exposed.
Number one, that they were always exposed to destruction as one that stands
or walks in slippery places is always exposed to fall. This is implied in
the manner of their destruction coming upon them. being represented by
their foot sliding. The same is expressed, Psalm 73, 18. Surely though this
set them in slippery places, though casted them down into destruction. It
implies they were always exposed to sudden, unexpected destruction. As he
that walks in slippery places is every moment liable to fall, he cannot
foresee one moment, whether he shall stand or fall the next, and when he
does fall, he falls at once without warning. Which is also expressed in
Psalm 73, 18, 19. Surely though this set them in slippery places, though
casted them down into destruction. How are they brought into desolation? As
in a moment. Number three. Another thing implied is that they are liable to
fall of themselves. Without being thrown down by the hand of another. As he
that stands or walks on slippery grounds, needs nothing but his own weight
to throw him down. Number four. That the reason why they are not fallen
already, and do not fall now, is only that God's appointed time is not
come. For it is said that when that due time or appointed time comes, their
foot shall stand, and their foot shall slide, then they shall be left to
fall, as they are inclined by their own weight. God will not hold them up
in these slippery places no longer, but will let them go. And then at that
very instant, they shall fall into destruction. Moment. As he that stands
on such slippery declining grounds, on the edge of a mountain, he cannot
stand alone. When he is let go, he immediately falls and is lost. The
observation from the words that I would now insist upon, is this. There is
nothing that keeps wicked men at one moment out of hell but the mere
pleasure of God. By the mere pleasure of God, I mean his sovereign
pleasure, his arbitrary will, restrained by no obligation, hindered by no
matter of difficulty anymore than if nothing else but God's mere will had
it in the least degree. Or in any respect whatsoever, any hand in the
preservation of wicked men one moment. As you can see, it's an increscendo
sermon and it gets more and more visual, more and more direct. Application.
Remember that this is the third part or the second great block of the
sermon. The use of this awful subject may be for awakening unconverted
persons in this congregation. You can imagine that he was probably holding
his two hands on the pulpit and staring at certain people that he had
singled out. As the big sinners of his congregation and screaming almost at
them. So this could be very intense and it could be very personal when it
was delivered by someone that apparently knew you and knew of your
shortcomings and your problems. This that you have heard is the case of
every one of you that are out of Christ. That world of misery, that lake of
burning brimstone. As you can see, there's something that is almost poetic.
The repetition of a sound to make it even more intense. Burning brimstone.
It's an alliterative figure normally used in poetry. He's using it, he's
applying it to his sermon because he knows it's going to resonate in the
minds of people. He's using poetry as a way of making people fearful. That
lake of burning brimstone is extended abroad under you. There is a dreadful
pit of the glowing flames. The wrath of God. There is hell's wide gaping
mouth open. You can see a personification of hell as if it were a monster
with a mouth open. And you have nothing to stand upon. Nor anything to take
hold of. There is nothing between you and hell but the air. It is only the
power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up. You probably are not
sensible of this. You find that you are kept out of hell, but do not see
the hand of God in it. But look at other things as a good state of your
bodily constitution, your care of your own life, and the means you use for
your own preservation. But indeed these things are nothing. If God should
withdraw His hand, they would avail no more to keep you from falling than
the thin air to hold a person that is suspended in it. He's saying that no
matter how much we try to avoid death, death is only delivered by God's
hand. And if you are the sinner that He thinks you are, God's hand will
fall upon you at any moment. It's like a death wish in a certain way. Your
wickedness makes you, as it were, heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with
great weight and pressure towards hell. And if God should let you go, you
would immediately sink and swift descend and plunge into the bottomless
gulf. And your healthy constitution and your own care and prudence and best
constervance and all your righteousness would have no more influence to
uphold you and keep you out of hell. Than a spider web would have to stop a
falling rock. Were it not for the sovereign pleasure of God, the earth
would not bear you for one moment. For you are a burden to it. The creation
groans with you. The creature is made subject to the bondage of your
corruption. Not willingly, the sun does not willingly shine upon you to
give you light to serve sin and Satan. Again, another iteration to make it
even more intense. And as you can see, the text is becoming more and more
personal, more and more hurtful for whoever they could feel compelled or
addressed by these statements. The earth does not willingly yield her
increase to satisfy your lust. nor is it willingly a stage for your
wickedness to be acted upon. The air does not willingly serve you for
breath to maintain the flames of life in your vitals. As you can see, he's
aware of the progresses of medicine. He knows that people need air to
breathe, that they need to have a healthy constitution to live longer
lives. There is a connection between what is a traditional sermon and what
is a sermon of this 18th century that is connected to the ideas of science
and doesn't see science as nowadays it may be perceived from the standpoint
of religion as an enemy. It's seen as an explanation of many of the ideas
of divine providence. Religion is embraced in the Age of Enlightenment as a
way of explaining the grace of God. All of these scientists were also
religious people. In their majority. To maintain flames in your vitals.
While you spend your life in the service of God's enemies, God's creatures
are good and were made for men to serve God with and do not willingly
subserve to any other purpose and groan when they are abused to purposes so
directly contrary to their nature and end and the world would spew you out
were it not for the sovereign hand of Him who has subjected it in hope.
There are black clouds of God's wrath now hanging directly over your heads
full of dreadful storm and big with thunder and were it not for the
restraining hand of God it would immediately burst forth upon you. The
sovereign pleasure of God for the present stays His rough wind. Otherwise
it would come with fury and your destruction would come like a whirlwind
and you would be like the chaff of the summer threshing floor. The wrath of
God is like great waters that are damned for the present. they increase
more and more and rise higher and higher till an outlet is given and the
longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course. When
once it is let loose, it is true that judgment against your evil works has
not been executed hitherto. The floods of God's vengeance have been
withheld but your guilt in the meantime is constantly increasing and you
are every day treasuring up more wrath. The waters are constantly rising
and waxing more and more mighty and there is nothing but the mere pleasure
of God that hold the waters back, that are unwilling to be stopped and
press hard to go forward. If God should only withdraw His hands from the
floodgates, it would immediately fly open and the fiery floods of the
fierceness and wrath of God It would rush forth with inconceivable fury and
it would come upon you with omnipotent power and if your strength were
10,000 times greater than it is, yeah, 10,000 times greater than the
strength of the stoutest, sturdiest devil in hell, it would be nothing to
withstand or endure it. The bow of God, God's wrath is bent and the arrow
made ready on the string and justice bends the arrow at your heart. So he's
using, the sea, the rising sea as an example, a bow and arrow holding over
the flames of hell. Hell as a monster. Everything is a continuous metaphor
and a continuous twist and turn of the same concept of ideas that come back
to haunt the people that feel that they're full of sin. And it is nothing
but the mere pleasure of God and that of an angry God without any promise
or obligation at all that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk
with your blood. Thus all you that never pass under a great change of heart
by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls. All of you that
were never born again, to be born again is to be baptized. So all of those
that are not baptized and made new creatures and raised from being dead in
sin to a state of new and before altogether inexperienced light and life
are in the hands of an angry God. Remember that all of the traditional
rights of Christian and Catholic Church are in terms of being reborn. It is
part of baptism and it is also part of the communion to be reborn and to
leave behind your sins. So all of the people that have not been born again
Excuse me. However, you may have reformed your life in many things and may
have had religious affections and may keep up a form of religion in your
family and closets. And in the house of God, it is nothing but His mere
pleasure that keeps you from being this moment swallowed up in everlasting
destruction. However unconvinced you may be, you may now be of the truth of
what you hear. By and by, you will be fully convinced of it. Those that are
gone from burying in the like circumstances with you see that it was so
with them for destruction came suddenly upon most of them when they
expected nothing of it. And while they were saying peace and safety, now
they see that nothing of it. And while they were saying that those things
on which they depended for peace and safety were nothing but thin air and
empty shadows. So if you want to seek peace and safety in the world, you
have to put your soul in the hands of God. Nothing else can offer you peace
and safety. There is no amount of material possession that can give you
that. The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a
spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you. and is
dreadfully provoked. His wrath towards you burns like fire. He looks upon
you as unworthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire. He is of pure
eyes, and to bear to have you in his sight. You are ten thousand times more
abominable in his eyes than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.
You can see the exaggeration is as absolute as he can think of. You have
offended him infinitely, more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince.
And yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the
fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else that you did not go
to hell last night. That you was suffered to awake again in this world
after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be
given why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning.
But that God's hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given
why you have not gone to hell since you have sat here in the house of God
provoking his pure eyes by your sinful, wicked manner of attending his
solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason
why you do not, at this very moment, drop down into hell. O sinner,
consider the fearful danger you are in. It is a great furnace of wrath, a
wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath that you are held over
in the hands of that God whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much
against you as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender
thread with the flame of divine fire. And wrath flashing about it and ready
every moment to singe it and burn it asunder. And you have no interest in
any mediator and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep
off the flames of wrath. nothing of your own nothing that you have ever
done nothing that you can do to induce God to spare you one moment and this
is the conclusion this last paragraph is the conclusion the wrapping
comment after the application therefore let everyone that is out of Christ
now awake and fly from the wrath to come the wrath of almighty God is now
undoubtedly hanging over a great part of this congregation let everyone fly
out of Sodom haste and escape for your lives look not behind you escape to
the mountains lest you be consumed so as you can see everything he's
talking about thin air holding a spider over flames holding people over
hell if you stop to think about it that is that makes it obvious that he
was aware of Newton's theory of gravity which is from the time and also
that he was aware of Locke's theory about sense perceptions and how
important they were the idea that senses the five senses were being
described scientifically so there is a very strong connection between this
style of delivering sermons and the science and the enlightenment of the
time and I think that's a that's a really interesting concept to connect
I've gone over I've skipped on purpose his biography in order to make sure
that we could read the text in its full extent I'm going to go back in the
presentation if you have it open at home or if you've printed it out to
talk about some of the ideas that I would like you to walk away with today
I hope that I've been successful in helping you understand the difference
between Jonathan Edwards and everything that came before him. The first
idea is to, that I would like you to walk away, that one of the main
takeaways from this class is to understand that the Great Awakening was not
only a failed attempt to extend the longevity of American Puritanism, but
also the seed of a great deal of American culture and American spirits. And
many of the ideas were not extended in time, but they were transformed and
repurposed thanks to the Great Awakening. If you've read the sermon while I
was talking, while I was reading it, or if you've read it before class or
you're going to read it afterwards, I hope that you're able to perceive
that from the literary point of view, it's a very well-written piece of
literature. It's considered a literary masterpiece for its time. And it
does what all good literature of its time does. It experiments. It pushes
the boundary of what is being done in that moment. Good literature is not
literature that follows. It's literature that opens new trails. It's a
trailblazing literature. So it's experiments from the point of view of
rhetorical strategies, because these sermons are designed to be heard, not
to be read. So they have to impact the listener. And that style is not
exactly the same as the style that someone would have writing. It's
designed to help the preacher inflect his voice in certain moments, raise
the voice, lower the voice, change the tone. And that's very important. We
can also connect to the idea that speeches were incredible sources of
knowledge of the 17th and 18th century. They were one of the only points of
connection of the community with the outside world. And it was, they were,
they revolved about the idea of divine revelation, which Patricio was
illustrating very well in this terms of how revelation is something that is
individualistic and comes sometimes through emotional outbreaks of
hallelujah, raising the hands. In fact, saying amen when you think that you
should put an amen there, not when a book of prayers says that an amen goes
in a certain place. The church transformed the religious experience not
into something congregational, but something congregational that is built
over individual experience. The combination of those individual experiences
is what makes a congregation, and that's different to the previous
religious experience. Completely different to European tradition, and
that's what makes American religion and European religion become so
divergent nowadays. But also, there's a bizarre aggregate. It's using human
reason and human science as a driving force of sermon. Something that
sounds counterintuitive for our perception, how our current day
perceptions. Where we see religion and science as somewhat rivals, instead
of parts of society that are working together. In that time, the only areas
of knowledge were the universities, and the universities were absolutely
controlled by religion. So everything that happened in a university,
mathematics, science, had to be framed within a religious aspect. And the
moment it diverts from religion is when... That scientist in particular
could get into very serious trouble from the religious point of view. If
you remember a French philosopher, Descartes, Descartes, Descartes.
Deconstructs religion And when he gets to the point Where he deconstructs
religion And everything And he says the only thing he knows Is that he
knows nothing He rebuilt his idea And some believe It is a way of
preventing Religion persecution So many of these Scientific Treatises of
the time Were built As a way of Exposing new discoveries But also with a
part That made it compatible With the mainstream thinking And the
mainstream Religious boundaries of the time Normally it was not seen As an
opponent Of religion As an opponent of faith But as a way of explaining
God's grace So science was not seen As a As a force that was Counter
opposing Religion at any moment And that point of view Jonathan Edwards is
extremely Radically modern He's very modern for the time It's very
important to notice The amount The overwhelming amount of imagery That is
present How many visual images Oral images We Our, all of our senses Are
overwhelmed By the amount of imagery That is present In the sermons And he
uses Two Two rhetoric Devices That are normally Normally Used in poetry
Symbols As a way of explicitly Stating something And metaphors As a way of
implicitly Explaining something So he has the explicitness And the implicit
He uses symbols For the explicit And metaphors For the implicit And that
requires him To have a very Deep understanding Of literature regarding his
biography in these last five minutes he's a born American and that's one of
the big differences with this generation everything that is to come
Benjamin Franklin was born three years apart and they're the yin and the
yang I talked about them Jonathan Edwards is born into a family of
preachers and becomes a preacher Benjamin Franklin's family was so poor
that they could only send one of their children to school every year so
every year one of the children of the Franklin family got to go to school
so we see opposing territories here he was raised up in the Connecticut
River Valley area and he became very soon a child prodigy in a time where
the initial Puritan fervor had been absolutely diluted and he studied Locke
and Newton at Yale and as we said before he is considered one of the
founders of Princeton so his connection with these elitist American
universities is very evident connected to alumni of Yale and a one of the
founders of Princeton he applied his learnings on physics and paracisms and
rationalism to his own purpose in life which was to write sermons and
reflect about the magnificence of God he is opposed to the deist ideas
we're going to talk about deists in the next class because we don't have
time at all and the idea of reaching God through reason alone which was a
very European idea but that was contradictory with Puritanism and therefore
within the religion there were even opposing bands and you see that in
every religion how the factions of religion become bigger enemies than the
religious people versus the non-religious people so He is very commonly
referred to as the last great Puritan. He was convinced of regaining
Orthodox Calvinism, but his own way of applying his knowledge to sermons
was so unorthodox that it was a paradox in itself, how he attempted to
restore Orthodox Puritanism, stepping out of the Orthodox Puritan
principles. The central idea of Calvinism is that salvation only comes by
God's free and irresistible gift of grace, and it is opposed completely to
free will. Edwards' work were never meant for publication, but there are
more than 1,200 sermons that have reached our times, 1,200. And 50 sermons
have reached our times. These works have been seen as huge sources of
inspiration for American culture because of their experimental tone and
literary innovation. And he's been considered from a very early period one
of the major figures of the canon of American letters. And I'm so happy.
Because I've just finished. And it's the first time I really fit into the
amount of time that we have. Those of you that are at home, thank you very
much for connecting. Thank you very much to the two of you for attending
the class in person. And next week, we're going to dive into a small facet
of one of the most fascinating figures of American history, and I would say
universal history, the polymath, the Saviour. Benjamin Franklin and his
literary persona. Thank you very much. I hope you found the class useful.